The present invention claims foreign priority under 35 U.S.C. § 119 based on Korean Patent Application No. 10-2002-0085121, filed Dec. 27, 2002, the contents of which is incorporated herein by reference.
1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to a playlist managing apparatus and method, and more particularly, to a playlist managing apparatus and method capable of automatically generating and updating a playlist in response to a dynamically changing taste of a user.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In the related art, a compact disc (CD) is an optical storage medium constructed such that data such as texts, audios and videos are sorted and stored therein based on tracks. The data recorded on the tracks can be read out when desired. Each CD comprises a lead-in area on which a table of contents (hereinafter, referred to as “TOC”) including information on the number of tracks, starting points of the tracks, lengths of the tracks and the like is recorded, a program area in which audio data are actually recorded, and a lead-out area indicating the end of the CD, in accordance with the Red Book standards.
In the case of a related art audio CD, the number, names and play times of pieces of music recorded in the CD are included in the TOC in the lead-in area. When the audio CD is inserted into a CD player, the TOC recorded in the lead-in area is read out and the audio data can be reproduced according to the information included in the TOC.
However, the related art has various problems and disadvantages. For example, but not by way of limitation, the related art audio CD made in accordance with Red Book standards employs a scheme by which the TOC is sequentially read from the beginning to the end thereof. Thus, there is a related art problem in that the initialization time required for recognizing a large number of pieces of audio data recorded on the CD is increased by this access method.
Further, in case of the audio CD made in accordance with Red Book standards, since only information on play times for the respective tracks is included in the TOC, there is a related art problem in that it is impossible to perform a keyword search using a keyword such as the name of a musician, the name of a piece of music or the name of an album. Thus, a great deal of time and effort is needed to search for a desired piece of music.
To solve these related art problems, research has been actively conducted on CD standards capable of reducing access time to a CD by reading the TOC within a short period of time, and of providing a search function for a piece of audio music by simultaneously recording information on artists, kinds, albums and the like in the TOC.
As one of such CD standards, a proposed MultiAudio specifications (Revision 1.10, 2002.9.18, OSTA; hereinafter, referred to as “MA”) format is capable of reproducing digital audio data compressed in a format independent of a file system, even by using other storage medium as well as a CD. MA is a kind of audio data recording format that allows a disc with compressed digital audio data such as MP3 or WMA files recorded thereon to be used in the same manner as an audio CD meeting the general Red Book standards.
FIG. 1 is a view showing a layout of the MA. A plurality of pieces of audio data, a TOC file (TOC.MAU), and one or more TrackList files such as Blues.MAU or Jazz.MAU are recorded on a CD meeting the MA specifications. The TOC file includes a TrackEntries field for indicating positions of respective pieces of digital audio data, and a User Defined Playlist field for indicating TrackEntries arranged in the order desired by a user. The TrackList file includes a field with TrackEntries arranged in the same order as the Playlist field in preparation for lack of memory of a storage medium.
In other words, in case of the MA, tracks or part of tracks that are recording units of audio data are set as one user defined track, and a playlist that is the order of reproducing tracks based on each piece of music desired by a user is generated and recorded on the user defined track. Thus, only pieces of music desired by the user can be sequentially reproduced in the future in accordance with the playlist of the pieces of music that the user wants to reproduce.
However, in case of a CD in which digital audio data corresponding to as many as 200 pieces of music are recorded, it is difficult to set the order of pieces of audio data, which are desired among such a large number of pieces of audio data, at a time and to generate the playlist. Accordingly, the user presses the skip button whenever undesired pieces of audio data in the playlist are reproduced, or perform an operation for deleting the undesired pieces of audio data from a relevant playlist.
More specifically, once a playlist is generated, the generated playlist is immediately burned on a CD. Thus, in a case where the playlist is recorded on an unwritable CD, it is impossible to edit the playlist. In such a case, the user presses the skip button whenever an undesired piece of music is reproduced during reproduction of the pieces of audio data included in the playlist. Further, even though a playlist is recorded on a writable CD, the user performs an operation for deleting relevant pieces of music from the playlist by editing the playlist. Thus, there is a problem in that the related art scheme as discussed above is cumbersome.
That is, although the audio CD made in the MA format can provide rapid initialization driving and a keyword search function for a piece of audio music, there is a limitation in that it is impossible to provide a playlist that responds to a dynamic change in taste of the user.